


Star Wars, Episode IIa- The Balanced Force

by Cassie_Citrine



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:47:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21839953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cassie_Citrine/pseuds/Cassie_Citrine
Summary: This is an alternate narrative to Episode II: Attack of the Clones. It begins around the same time in prequel continuity, but it is centered on Padmé and has an entirely different plot. You can assume that Episode I more or less happened as written (with a few notable exceptions that will be explained in the story) and that everything from A New Hope on is still cannon. Otherwise, forget everything you know about Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.
Relationships: Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	1. The Arrival

Padmé flinched as her shuttlecraft dipped beneath the proscenium arch on the outskirts of Theed, ion engines howling. Her stomach was flung upward into her throat as Nabboo’s capital city burst into view out the side window, its copper spires quickly becoming inverted. “Watch it, flyboy,” she shouted toward the cockpit. “This isn’t the Outer Rim. We’ve got laws on our books about flying like a big dumb idiot within city limits. I should know--I signed them myself.”

“Don’t worry,” said a smooth, cocky voice from just beyond Padmé’s peripheral vision. “I’ve got a friend high up in the government around here. Really powerful. She’s a senator, in fact.” 

The ship was now entirely upside-down, and Padmé felt the blood rushing to her head. The palace was visible out the window now, but only as a flash of white stone and verdigris stained domes. Then the afterburners kicked in, and the world outside the window became a spinning blur of grass and sky. Padmé felt her lungs compressing into the back of her ribcage, and she grabbed at her throat, struggling for breath. A childhood spent stealing time in flight simulators told her that they’d just broke five gees for no reason at all. There were no Trade Federation fighters on their tail. No rebels, terrorists, or smugglers. 

This was just Anakin Skywalker trying to impress her for what felt like the tenth time that week. 

“Your powerful senator friend can’t help you if she dies before you land,” she croaked. “And you’re not going to like the prisons on Naboo. They’re run by Gungans.”

Anakin clicked his tongue a few times, righting the ship and pulling back on the accelerator. “Gungans aren’t a bad lot. They seem like they’d be rather kind as prison guards, all things considered.”

Padmé let out an audible sigh, followed by a small cough as she caught her breath. She stifled the last of it--don’t show weakness!--and then managed to turn it into a low, sardonic chuckle. “Oh, they’re not only the guards. They’re also the cooks,” she said. “Now please--fly like a sane person for at least thirty seconds so I can unstrap and come sit with you.”

Padmé flicked a switch on her safety belt, and the harness slid off her body and back up into the wall. She got up on shaking legs, straightened her top, and crawled into the cockpit. There was an empty seat next to Anakin, and she effortlessly slipped into it. “I don’t see why you insisted on spending half the journey in the back,” he moped.

“Because we’re not supposed to be friends, remember? Your bosses on the council don’t trust men and women to even be in the same room together without a chaperone. They think it’ll lead you down the rabbit hole of lustful temptation.”

“Don’t remind me,” said Anakin.

“It’s a damn shame, too,” Padmé replied. “If it wasn’t for that vow of celibacy…” She grinned, seeing Anakin’s knuckles turn white on the steering wheel. “If it wasn’t for that vow, I’d ask you to break me off a hunk of that delicious Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

The ship lurched beneath the Jedi's wrists. “Obi-Wan!?” Anakin spat.

“Or that adorable little green one. What’s his name? Soda?”

Anakin’s face turned dull. “You’re telling a joke,” he said.

She shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Can’t you use the force to read my true intentions or something?”

“Obviously,” he snapped.

“And?”

“Let’s get back to the mission,” he said, angling the shuttlecraft toward the west, into the setting sun. This was Gungan territory; swampy, murky, and devoid of most human life. Padmé knew that the Gungans had originally ranged free across Nabboo’s vast plains and prairies, but they’d been pushed deeper into the swamps as human settlement on the planet continued to expand. Humans and Gungans rarely interacted these days, and the brief period of peace between the societies had only lasted until the last Trade Federation droid had been deactivated. Without a common enemy, the age-old conflict between Naboo’s two sapient species had once again been reignited.

“I still don’t know why you wouldn’t let me bring Binks along,” Padmé said. “If the reading out here is Gungan--and it probably is--they’re not going to trust either of us.”

“The council doesn’t trust Jar-Jar Binks,” Anakin murmured. “He’s just force-sensitive enough to be dangerous. You know their policy--all potential force-users need to either be properly trained from an early age or dealt with. Can’t risk some new Dark Lord of the Sith showing up out of nowhere, can we?”

The back of Padmé neck prickled. She clenched her fists, then un-clenched them. Tried to focus on the reflection of the setting sun as it twinkled across the swampland in front of the low-flying shuttlecraft. “Yeah but...Jar-Jar is Jar-Jar. He can’t possibly be a threat. I mean, for God’s sake, I once saw the man try to eat a bowl of crawfish. Two thirds of them ended up on the floor, and I think he still has one stuck in his hair.”

“That’s how I convinced the council to spare his life,” Anakin said. “Well, that and the fact that Obi-Wan likes him for some reason. Can’t imagine why.”

“Is...is that why the council sent us here?” She asked, allowing her voice to reveal just enough hesitation to seem vulnerable and ignorant. She knew that Anakin wasn’t powerful enough to sense her true intentions--not yet. “We’re here to...to kill some poor force-sensitive Gungan?”

“Hopefully not,” he said. “Master Yoda sensed an awakening on this part of Naboo, so it’s more likely that we’ll be plucking up some excited little youngling and bringing them back to the temple for training. That’s why the council wanted you to come with me--so you could help put an end to the rumor that the Jedi are taking children from their families against their will. We’re the good guys--you’ll see.”

“I know you are,” Padmé lied, placing a firm hand on Anakin’s shoulder. Nobody saw the wicked grin that crept across her face after that.


	2. Recklessness

When they reached the coordinates that Obi-Wan’s astromech had plugged into their ship’s computer, there was no landing pad. There wasn’t even a large strip of rock or scrub-patch big enough to put the shuttle down without risk. The autolander’s droning klaxxon wouldn’t stop its incessant klaxxoning, and a big red triangle with an exclamation point inside filled their viewscreen like a hologame. “We should have brought a droid,” Padmé muttered.

“I told you I don’t NEED a droid,” replied Anakin. “I can land any ship, anywhere. Watch.”

Anakin pulled a lever, and the retrorockets on the bottom of the shuttle kicked into overdrive. Its wings swept up, blocking their side windows, and Anakin began to gradually set the ship down in what looked to be a fairly shallow bog. Padmé knew that Naboo’s swampland could be deceptive, but she kept her lips sealed.  _ Let the Jedi figure this one out on his own _ , she thought.

As the shuttle’s landing gear began to sink past the surface of the bog, she felt Anakin flinch. “See?” he clucked. “Nothing to worry about. I’m sure we’ll touch bottom soon.”

“I’m sure we will,” Padmé replied, resisting the urge to reach out and gently brush the back of her hand against his shoulder. She could sense how anxious he was, how badly he wanted to prove himself to her, not only as a Jedi and a pilot, but as a man. Any pushback, and he’d lose face on all three counts. Better to let what was going to happen happen.

To Padmé’s shock, the landing gear actually did touch bottom only a few moments later. This was unusual. She could typically sense danger a few minutes before it happened; a prickle on the back of her neck combined with a feeling that the magnetism of the world was being drawn in hundreds of different directions. This was especially true here on Naboo, where her connection to the force was especially strong. She’d felt that tingle here, just moments ago, and figured that Anakin had misjudged the depth of his landing spot. Apparently not. Maybe her time on Coruscant had dulled her senses--all those people, arranged in unnatural vertical towers, their auras so bright and loud. So many Jedi to shield her mind from, as well.

Then she felt the shuttle being pulled backwards and down.

“What’s that?” Anakin shouted, flipping a series of switches and attempting to re-ignite the retrorockets.

Padmé avoided the temptation to read the creature that had grabbed ahold of their ship. If Anakin was a tenth the force-user he bragged he was, he’d also be attempting to make a connection with the beast. If Anakin sensed her true power as they both reached out together, the mission could be lost. “I-I don’t know!” she replied, affecting a quivering vulnerability in her voice. “But we’re being dragged down into the muck!”

She expected Anakin to calm his mind and use the force, but instead he unstrapped himself and ignited his lightsaber with a loud  _ thrummmmmmmm _ . Always zero to lightspeed with this guy. “I’ll get the hatch before we’re pulled under!” she shouted, careful to keep her pitch high enough and timbre hot enough to elude suspicion despite knowing full well that Anakin wasn’t paying any attention to her. His mind was focused on the threat like a laser blast, and he wouldn’t stop until he’d slain the dragon and saved his princess.

The plexiglass hatch opened with a hiss, and both of its passengers popped out, ready to fight. Anakin twirled around, brandishing his saber above his head in a perfect Vom Tag, ready to strike at the first opportunity, while Padmé drew the blaster from her hip. They were standing on the roof of the shuttle now, its wings at vertical angles to each side, and Padmé was keenly aware that the space available to them was dwindling rapidly. The shuttle was indeed being dragged downward from the rear, and they only had moments before they would be failing around in deceptively deep swamp water--and completely vulnerable to attack.

“What is it?” Anakin spat. “I don’t see anything!”

“Could be a baby Sando. Or a Gooberfish. Either way, it’s pulling us under. And once the ship is under…”

Anakin’s gave Padmé a wicked grin. “Let’s not let it get that far,” he quipped, running forward and taking a flying leap off the deck of the ship and into the water, saber pointing downward. Padmé couldn’t help but smile back. You could say a lot of shit about Anakin Skywalker, but his bravery was impossible to doubt.

Anakin disappeared beneath rippling water, and the ship suddenly stopped being pulled. Padmé tightened her grip on her blaster, ready to fire the instant she saw the creature’s flesh. A second passed. Another. Another. No sign of Anakin. No movement under the waves at all. The world around her seemed to return to normalcy, and she experienced a slight pang of nostalgia as the passive sounds of her home planet washed over her--the low buzz of flying insects, the  _ chirr-chirrup _ of familiar songbirds. She hadn’t realized how eerie the silent skies of Coruscant had been until this very moment.

Her train of thought was derailed by a loud splash as a very muddy Anakin popped back to the surface, gasping for breath. “How’s it going?” she said.

“Oh, you know,” he said, diving back under.

Padmé could no longer resist checking the situation out for herself. As she reached out with the force, she suddenly felt the light of connection enter her, sparking her awareness of just how alive this place really was. Now she could no longer just hear the bugs and birds--she could feel them. She was them. No different from a tree or a blade of grass or the baby Sando that was currently trying to whip its tail into Anakin’s flailing torso. They were all drops of water from the same endless sea - seperate for now, perhaps, but not for long.

The Sando, she knew, was hungry and scared. It had been lurking just beneath the surface, waiting for a large waterfowl to set down, and it had been surprised by the size and texture of the spaceship. She could also sense Anakin’s clumsy attempts to infiltrate its mind--God, he was powerful, but he clearly had no idea what he was doing. Instead of soothing the poor creature, he was blasting it with intense psychic waves of hate - using the force the same way he used a lightsaber. As skeptical as she was of the Jedi Order’s dogma, she also knew that Master Yoda would not have approved. There was real darkness in Anakin, and it scared her. 

“Flee,” she tried to tell the creature. “He will not back down. Leave. Now.”

But the Sando was too disconnected from the force, too scared, too desperate. In one last desperate attempt to take control of the situation, it swam toward the surface and slammed into the ship with every last centimeter of its slimy form, trying to pull it down on top of the attacking Jedi. 

Both Padmé and Anakin sensed this a moment before it happened. Padmé turned and ran, cartwheeling off the front of the shuttle and into open water an instant before the Sando pulverized the spot she’d been standing on. Anakin used the attack as an opening to plunge his saber into the creature’s soft underbelly, staining the bog red with its blood. As Padmé did her best to tread water, she could hear the Sando’s dying howls as the remnants of their destroyed shuttlecraft disappeared into the ruddy muck.

“I guess we’re walking back,” Padmé said a few minutes later, pulling herself up onto the shore, her waterlogged robes weighing her down.

“Guess so,” said Anakin, who dragged himself up onto the rocky ground next to her, still panting from so much time underwater. “Hey...you didn’t...feel anything back there, did you?”

Padmé flinched. “Like what?”

Anakin scoffed. “I don’t know why I even asked. It’s a force thing. Never mind. But you know the force-sensitive target we’re here to acquire? I think I sensed them during the fight. Reaching out. Trying to help. It was faint, but...familiar, somehow.” 

“Strange,” Padmé said, patting Anakin on the back while silently cursing herself. She’d been reckless, and it had almost cost her everything. “Well, I guess that means the mission’s still on?”

“Indeed it is,” he said, standing up and reaching a hand down to her.

She took it, gladly. 


End file.
